


The Kitchen Table

by drpepperdiva91



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Complete, Dialogue Heavy, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, If You Squint - Freeform, John is angry, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sherlock is a Mess, angry men in love, i guess this could be read without johnlock but that's not how i indended, only brief mentions of Mary and the baby, possibly canon compliant, post-series 3, your mileage may vary
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-04
Updated: 2015-12-04
Packaged: 2018-05-04 21:21:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5348945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drpepperdiva91/pseuds/drpepperdiva91
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Okay. Alright," Sherlock says, his chest constricting with the reality that John is <em>back</em>, he is <em>home</em>, and everything is <em>horrible still</em>, but for a few minutes he can sit at the kitchen table and pretend everything is fine. For all intents and purposes, everything is fine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Kitchen Table

**Author's Note:**

> Keep in mind that this is me, procrastinating studying for my final exams, not a work of literary excellence.

They're sitting at the kitchen table, and for all intents and purposes, everything should be fine. They're both alive. Both of them, in their own ways, in their own situations, thought that the other being alive would someday be enough to pull them through. They're not sure, now, if they were right. 

_Don't be dead._

_I heard you._

They're sitting at the kitchen table, and it doesn't feel like  _their_ table anymore. John doesn't live here; Sherlock is a ghost. The table is an orphan, abandoned in the wake of the deceit that tore them apart. John's hands are folded in his lap, clenched, while he leans forward and digs his arms into the table's edge to ground himself. Sherlock's are limp, resting flat on the tabletop. It's almost like they're touching, by proxy. Almost.

Sherlock knows why John is here; their plan for Mary backfired spectacularly (as all of Sherlock's plans seem to do, these days). She skipped the country, baby Watson in tow, and even Mycroft hasn't been able to find her. John can't stomach living in his marital home, and now that there aren't any pretenses to keep up, he has no reason to try. His duffel is sitting by the door, surrounded by the broken china and assorted knickknacks that litter the floor of the sitting room.

The broken bits of Sherlock's (or do they just belong to 221B now?) belongings are the result of a screaming row they had- one of the loudest and most violent Sherlock's ever participated in, in fact. John had arrived, desperately angry and equally irritable, and they made a concerted effort at small talk until-

_"What that ACTUAL FUCK do you think I BLOODY DID for those years?! It wasn't a walk in the-"_

and

_"How could you possibly be THIS SELFISH, and SO NAIEVE as to think I would even-"_

and 

_"This is all because_ _YOU deviated from MY PLAN, John, this was FOOLPROOF, and you're obviously the FOOL-"_

and

_"Screaming yourself awake in the middle of the night doesn't make you SPECIAL, you bloody broken idiot-"_

and

_"YOU never even WANTED a child, you should be RELIEVED-"_

and 

_"YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN SHE WAS DANGEROUS FROM THE START, BUT YOU KEPT THAT FROM ME TOO-"_

and

_"MYCROFT WAS RIGHT, I SHOULD HAVE LET THEM KILL ME, SAVE EVERYONE THE TROUBLE-"_

It had ended, thankfully, shortly after Sherlock (back to the wall, all exits visible) had crouched down on the floor to keep himself from falling, and held his hands up (In surrender? He wasn't sure) _,_ shaking. Sherlock drew in a few quaking breaths, and kept his eyes squeezed shut while he whispered-

"Stop. Stop, please, I know. I know. I know I can't fix it. I can't do this. I can't," not entirely sure what he meant as the words tumbled out of him. His voice was scratchy and breathless from shouting.

John hadn't answered, but he didn't leave either. When Sherlock looked up again, he spotted John sitting at the table, and had gone to join him, sitting directly across the table.

Sherlock knows why John is here; he knows they need to talk; he knows that John intended to stay at least for the night, if not to move back in entirely. But now, everything seems more tenuous than it was twenty minutes ago- and twenty minutes ago, Sherlock would have believed that was a highly improbable outcome. He can't make the first move here; perhaps he can't make any moves; perhaps the timer has run out for him. Sherlock Holmes is a ghost, and 221B is nobody's home anymore. So, Sherlock sits, and waits, across from John, who stares him down and digs his fingernails into his palms to keep from screaming all over again.

"This isn't-" John finally bites out, and Sherlock can tell he's making an effort to sound kind, but failing miserably. "It's not what I meant... I didn't. Um." John coughs awkwardly, pretends to clear his throat. Swallows his saliva. Flexes his left hand. "Maybe I did, though. I might have. Meant it. I might have, but shouldn't, I'm not- I dunno." He shakes his head. "I dunno why I came here."

"Feeling rather conflicted is probably a reasonable reaction to what you've experienced recently," Sherlock says to the table. He is burning with shame and failure, despite the fact that he has repeatedly given his life for the man sitting in front of him.

"Reasonable!" John barks out- and then is laughing, almost hysterically. "Nothing about this is reasonable. You do know that, right?"

"Mmm." Sherlock answers, again to the table, a non-committal hum in his throat. Certainly, it is unreasonable to be talking to a ghost. A ghost who came back from the dead, was killed by your wife, who came back from the dead- again! really dead this time!- murdered a man in cold blood right in front of you, outed your wife as a wanted assassin and national security threat, and then let her escape with your newborn child. Yes, this could be considered unreasonable.

They stay quiet for a moment. John cracks his knuckles, then his wrists. Clenches his fists again. Sherlock can feel him staring but is unwilling to meet his eyes.

"You're not okay, are you? Really." John states, more than asks, so sincerely that Sherlock almost believes he is genuinely concerned. Regardless of John's motivation, Sherlock chooses to answer honestly.

"I don't think so. No." He continues to stare at the table. Wonders if he leaves his palms on the surface long enough, if they will slip through the solid material. Wonders if ghosts can live that long. He's not a physicist, or even a real ghost, he reminds himself. He wonders when was the last time he slept. He's dizzy when he closes his eyes; he feels as if he could float away. Surely it hasn't been so long.

"No." John agrees. "You're not. And I'm not. But I just- I dunno. I don't know how to fix any of this, or if I want to, or if I could even if I tried. I don't-" John cut off, searching for words, and then gestures between the two of them, his fingers pointing first at himself, then to Sherlock, then back. "We don't- haven't ever. Talk. Like this."

"We haven't really needed to."

"No, you're wrong. We wouldn't have fucked everything up if we had done."

At that, Sherlock finally looks up. He can see it in John's face, for just a moment- a fleeting glimpse of what they had, before everything. Before Mary. Before he jumped.  _We._

"You didn't 'fuck it up,' John."

"I didn't make it better," John answers, very seriously, and moves his elbows to the table to rest his forehead in his palms. Sherlock can't disagree, though he wants to, so he says nothing. John takes a deep breath, and lets it out through pursed lips. He does this several times, and Sherlock finds himself starting to nod off, soothed slightly by the steady rhythm. "I don't know what to do, Sherlock."

"Well, for starters, I think it's clear that everyone needs to stop listening to me," Sherlock says, and his tone comes out more tired and resigned than he intended. John snorts, and reaches out to place a hand on the back of Sherlock's, who jerks away as if burned and instantly flushes in embarrassment.

"It's alright, Sherlock," John says, finally finding a quieter, soothing tone, the one Sherlock imagines he uses with young, frightened children. "I remember how it is, you know."

"How _what_ is?" Sherlock counters, surprising himself with the steel in his tone.

"Coming home from war, just to find you've been forgotten by everyone you love," John says, as if it's the easiest, most normal thing in the world. And perhaps, in the aftermath of his disaster of a marriage and the destruction of the only friendship that's ever truly mattered to him, it is normal.

Sherlock goes back to addressing the table, rather than John. "It would have been better if you forgot me."

John reaches out for him again, slower this time, and his hand is warm and alive against the cold gooseflesh on Sherlock's forearm. "Never. I would never forget you, Sherlock Holmes. Please know that. I don't know what I'm doing here, and I don't know how to cope with all of this. But I would never forget you."

Just like that, Sherlock's walls are back up. He knows better than to do this again, and it hurts, it _hurts_ as if someone is ripping a bullet wound through his chest again, but he knows better. He's learned his lessons. He jerks his arm away and pushes his chair back from the table, out of John's reach. His arms dangle limply at his sides, and he doesn't quite manage to care about the fact that he looks like a limp noodle. "Don't. Don't do this."

"Don't do what?"

"I... I don't know. I don't know what to call it. But stop."

"No."

"No? You can't just say no."

"I can. And I just did."

"Why are you-"

"No, Sherlock. Stop. Shut up. I just-" John pauses, trying to figure out what he wants to say. "I don't know how to fix relationships. I never have been very good at it. You've seen the revolving door of girlfriends, and the only reason Mike and I are 'friends' is because he's decided to stick around after everyone else left. You used to say alone protected you, but I know what alone is like. I am alone. When you're gone, or hurting, or when I push you away, I'm alone. People don't care about me the way they care about you-" John holds up his hand when Sherlock opens his mouth to protest. "No, stop. It's the truth and you know it.

"I don't know how to fix relationships, but I know how to fix people. Individually. As single units. All I do, what I'm best at, is fixing people. And you're not okay, and we're not okay, but of those two things, I only have the experience to do something about one. I can't fix us, but maybe if I fix you, if I help you, everything else will work out."

"That's one of the stupidest things you've ever said," Sherlock replies, his face unreadable to John.

"I'm not a poet. You know what I mean."

"Yes. I do."

"So?"

"You're saying you want to move back in, help me recover from the PTSD you just diagnosed me with, which by the way is not even close to your speciality, and hope that everything," Sherlock gestures to the mess they'd made of the sitting room, "will just work itself out?"

John looks down at his hands on the table, and then back up before speaking, still not ready to give it up. "When you say it like that, it does sound pretty stupid."

"That's because it is."

"Well?"

"You're going to hurt me again. I'll probably hurt you as well. We have a horrible track record, John."

"I don't want to leave you again." John says, his voice suddenly thick. "I'm angry and sometimes I feel like I hate you, but I don't want to leave. Please don't make me."

"I should," Sherlock says, his voice equally tight with emotion. "We shouldn't do this."

"Please, Sherlock," John asks, and Sherlock thinks of the number of times John has said  _please, Sherlock_ with that tone, and he knows he can never say no to him. Even when he knows better.

"Okay. Alright," Sherlock says, his chest constricting with the reality that John is  _back_ , he is  _home_ , and everything is  _horrible still_ , but for a few minutes he can sit at the kitchen table and pretend everything is fine. For all intents and purposes, everything is fine. 

For all intents and purposes, everything is fine until Sherlock realizes he is shaking, silent sobs tearing at his diaphragm, tears streaming down his face in a way John has never seen and hopes to never see again. He shakes his head, wipes furiously at his face, and only succeeds in making himself even more of a mess, snot and saline clinging to the backs of his hands. He can hear John's voice in his ear, feel John's arms wrap slowly and surely around his shoulders until he is pressing his face into John's neck, fisting his hand into John's jumper, feeling the jump of the blood in John's jugular vein against his forehead. John is apologizing, over and over, into Sherlock's hair, while he holds on. Neither of them are sure what he's even apologizing for.

They cling to each other until Sherlock is exhausted and John's shoulder is aching, and awkwardly part ways, heading to their respective beds. Sherlock tries to hate himself for this- for his display of vulnerability, for his devastating weakness for John Watson, for just another poor decision in a very long line of very poor decisions, but he can't bring himself to care. He knows they're going to self-destruct, and he knows it's going to be ugly. He goes to sleep with the weight of that sitting heavy on his chest, and the memory of John's words in his ears-

_"I don't want to leave you again."_

_"Please, Sherlock."_

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, lovely reader, for reading. I'd love it if you told me what you think. <3


End file.
